I might know what's currently eating at me. In a few years I'll have digested enough literature to write/speak abstractly about unknown frequencies using cultural metaphor and real science. For now, like everything else, I'm limited in the transliteration, and am forced to use the pithy tools I got.

A thing of note about my mental health history is that I wasn't exactly put together all that well before originally getting sick. This was often an ephemeral concept during the worst of times-- that my brain, in all likelihood littered with damage, wasn't working especially well beforehand, and as a result I was enormously tasked to get myself better, but not without humor in wondering what the **** better even meant.

One of many possibilities, in a system of functional imagination -- juggling all planes of outcome within a singular matrix -- was that I should have difficulty after healing up due to issues of concern before. Trying to pinpoint truths in terms of psycho-history is almost comical in that

- professionals use it as a tool
- it works

but considering placebos also work, it isn't surprising.

I think what I'm going through is malaise related to the aforementioned brain. There were things needing work. The confusion of "what am I feeling?" if I'm not depressed or manic is sort-of paradoxically beautiful.

In the field guide for living with mental health problems in a culture with a ruthless attitude towards inferiority and the sick, one of the truest data points is that in general, people do not give much of a f*ck about what goes on in your head if you are diagnosed: neurologists included. (**Although I did have a productive consultation with one in comparison to visiting the typical circus in psychiatry, as he seemed more willing to use drugs from any class and not just a random SSRI etched into the clock and writing pens of the office.)

Even my closest friends are apt to prematurely change the subject if on the rare chance I feel like being honest about what's going on in my life. Here's a big **** you to people that think "talking in a nice sounding voice" is a substitute for a conversation with feedback.

......

Last year I made a post in bbv wondering about neuro-symmetry, and if there is a more optimal way to connect neurons. I skipped the scientific method and gave a conclusion that positioning cells in 4D space would give them an opportunity to maximize the number of connections, making it so each neuron has a potential to connect to any other neuron in the brain.

At that point I wondered if that would feel like the brain was made of water, and as someone with chronic headaches how cool that might be.

It was sometime in early 2016 when the positive sensation (is there a term for anti-headaches?) started to really become apparent. I would consume medical chronic for hours at a time, feeling effervescence mainly in the frontal lobe, also the back of my head at times. It felt like a massage, and it seemed to correlate with gaining control of my mental health problem.

These anti-headaches have continued to the present date, with actual headaches decreasing in intensity and frequency. I feel like going deeper, into the area that gets me labeled as "weird". Maybe someone will relate to this, I literally have no idea if this is a regular thing for people who use cannabis, have mental health problems, or have had brain trauma and are in a recovery state. I have however been handwaved off by doctors w/mansions for talking about this stuff in any form. It's really cool how well off they all seem to be despite having no real interest in their profession.

At some point on the odyssey's timeline I felt an actual pinch between my eyes. This pinch moved slowly up to the top of my head along the prime meridian. For a few months the anti-headaches had been concerted on the meridian....it was if this was an especially important zone for communication between both sides of the brain. I imagined a needle and thread sewing my brain together before the pinching subsided.

I wondered when the anti-headaches would make their way to the spot where most of my headaches originate.

When they started, it was as if a cloud of wellness was passing through the brain's channels to troubled regions and then raining down medicine as needed. A feature that was not so apparent at the time was that each region was like it's own individual thing, there was not a connectivity so much as a randomness of where the cloud would be and where it would end up.

Sometime after the pinching episode, I felt a pressure start on one side of my head and end up on the other, as if these distant regions were somehow being bridged together.

There has since been a greater tendency for regions to feel connected. The cloud moved towards what felt like the center of my brain where there was an apparent "hardness" like a a golf ball where there should be sponge. It felt like the hardness was dissolving over time, which seemed good as it alleviated pressure headaches in that spot.

There was some kind of catharsis 13 months ago. It felt like the top of my skull had opened and contaminants were extracted. Eventually the cloud reached this top region and has since been combing the fibers on each side, creating a solid form where it had been doughy since being "opened".

The golf ball seems mostly dissolved, and the cloud is now in a region adjacent to the source of all headaches. Interestingly, the cloud's rain produces a gravity on the headache spot, and it feels tugged towards the cloud and soothed.

Overall, there is an apparent global connectivity that wasn't previously there. It's as if feeling a sensation in one spot, causes all other regions to activate and work together. It is not quite feeling like water, but it's actively getting there, and while I am a fiend for details and observation, along with the obscure, I must admit that it is bizarre even for me.

There was a medical story in the news maybe 2 years ago. A man went to a doctor after experiencing numbness. The scans concluded that most (~75%+ iirc) of his brain was missing, including crucial regions leaving the normally functioning guy as a medical mystery.

It seems that neurons can take on other duties. And possibly have information about the other neurons found within. Perhaps it is possible to build an entire brain starting with only a single neuron.

What is stopping parents from organizing and paying for metal detectors or other safety procedure? I'm not saying this is the best way to go about things, but it seems astonishingly simple to improve the security of a public building.

For the record, I do not have children and am defecting to Hawaii once online poker is back.

If I did have children and they attended a school without modern security protocol, I would send an e-mail to all of the parents and faculty letting them know that my kids and all kids of reasonable parents will no longer be attending until it becomes impossible for a classmate to go on a rampage.

The most difficult task is finding the kids a place to learn during the interim. An ironic twist would be using the closed down school as such; bringing in volunteer teachers and piecing together a makeshift security system while something more long lasting is worked out by our genius policy makers.

It’s really something that most people are in absolue need of a pronounced $$ quotient in order to lead radical lives. I don’t see that as a barrier to doing anything I can think of that would alter the ev of my life.

Money is never really the reason not to change the life. People often think that it is, because they are scared. That is the biggest thing that GA gave me, I don't have this fear, to lose everything material I posses, any more.

Yesterday evening I watched a Ted presentation done by Temple Grandin on the topic of a-typical brains. My own brain latched onto the vague classification system that she spoke about, grouping autistic minds into favoring one or more of three categories: Words, Patterns, and Visual Thinking. I'm not sure if it was a mistake to dive in and ponder if my brain favored one of the sub-types BEFORE considering the natural tendency for uniqueness in autism, and very likely neurotypical brains as well; I'm sitting there ruthlessly tinkering with the fundamentals all wrong but it allowed me to investigate without so much bias, which tends to benefit abstract exploration.

The order of her presentation had me first considering Visual Thinking. It was her strongest trait, and she had the most to say about it. She thinks in pictures, not in words. The visualizations are proficient and useful. She struggled with Algebra and excelled in Geometry. Art was her best subject.

Me: I'm a terrible artist and think using the sound of words. My own visual thinking has changed over time: I recalled struggling on standardized test questions that asked me to rotate shapes, and I excelled in Algebra and Geometry just fine in school. I had a severe depression that weighed on me in my 20s, and during that time there was a blank slate where visualizations used to occur. But when I smoke weed these days I flutter in and out of thought, often rotating 3-dimensional shapes in my mind for fun; however I recognize these visualizations don't happen quite so innately...the vivid scenes, colors, and dimension don't occur instinctively; it's more the reaction of having an active thought that takes shape. However, I do daydream often and when doing so the world around me disappears, I auto-pilot that *****, and fall deep into another realm.

I've found meditation to be useful in gaining a stronger peace of mind and also for falling asleep. There are a few additional exercises I've been experimenting with to moderate success, two of which I wish to share.

The idea of meditation is to block out external and internal stimuli, relax the mind and focus on nothing, or on a simple concept such as a single point in space.

Another way of doing it is with open eyes, with or without use of what I describe as a fixed peripheral motion stimulus.

The idea of open-eyed meditation is similar to closed-eye; you want to relax the mind and erase conscious thought, this time facing a sea of visual information. The biggest difference is that open-eye can be done practically anywhere and also while standing up. I find that focusing on a single point and trying to 'pierce through it' produces a good effect. Open-eye lowers a buffer and imo helps to externalize value gained, helping to strengthen the mind in a more normalized setting (vs the deep space of closed-eye).

F.P.M. is meditating to a fixed, non-still object that fills up most of the visual lens. I like to practice this while sitting 20 feet from a short tree with wide branches and a lot of leaves. I focus on a central point on the tree, while the surrounding leaves move together slightly with the wind. The idea is that the mind is still experiencing all of the moving leaves, but it's not allowed to think about them, or look at them individually being in a meditative trance. For me it's like adding weights to the exercise.

Love Meditation, Interesting I'll have to try some those . . .
Maybe these could help also, I always play them in the background on tv while working . . .

fish tv looks dope, thx. i found a new activity the other day while watching traffic. i sat a few hundred yards from a 2-way street that had cars moving at slowish speeds. i zoned out for a bit and studied the scene. then i fixed my sight towards the right side of the street and moved my eyes like a second-hand on a clock towards the left. this was difficult to do with all the motion but i assume it will be good for building focus.

I have pondered what a house should be like for myself someday as a faux ongoing project. I'm smitten by the idea of an all inclusive learning center divided into categories and arenas in various rooms, the details being what I assume to be too expected or just not interesting to write about. I did however dream of an awe inspiring apartment unit that had a vibe like a dungeon meant to block out distractions of the outside world, just for the sake of grinding online poker; or a different activity as the dream didn't indicate if I was gambling recreationally or not but it was still degenerate as all hell.

The floor plan was a vertical rectangle for the main living area, with what I assume were little spider legs for doors separating the bedroom, kitchen, laundry, and what have you. Black and minimalism were central themes with an aim for as little color stimuli (distraction) as possible. In the middle was a square coffee table circled by two L-shaped couches. At the the head of the room was a tall, arching window overlooking city lights or something relatively inspiring. Only the arch was exposed to the light, the rest of the window covered up by what looked like cabinet doors covered in mesh -- that being the only non plain texture in the whole room. The idea was to be able to tell night from day, and to reveal the window as a reward or when people are over.

There was a thin desk against the windowed wall. Seated at the desk, none of the window was visible to me except for the light which came through overhead. Three computer monitors, and a fourth screen for a television were in a row. They were all tuned to gambling, which was the main feature of the dream.

On one poker site I was trying to run up a bankroll playing ridiculously high stakes limit hold'em. On another I was multi tabling 6-max tournaments and having a great time chatting with my opponents. I had a sports betting website open and was deep in thought trying to handicap major league baseball games which were playing on the TV screen.

In game I had some wild swings playing LHE, at one point having ~30k stacks on a couple of tables playing something like 2k/4k stakes. It seemed like betting baseball was my main job. The cards flew around with the wonder I had once known as a beginner poker player.

There's been chatter regarding the merits of goal setting in nvg, the psychology forum, and Negreanu's social media. Daniel is pro goals and benchmarks and Mason is not. I think there are some merits to goal setting but the total EV is probably negative if Mason says it is.

I could set caloric goals and track my weight versus expectation, but instead have been exploring eating based on strategy and only caring about the trend of getting healthier over time. Instead of focusing on the uncertain future, I base my eating plans on the previous meal; the entire day up until that point; what I ate yesterday; what I've eaten in the past week or so. I think of what I can eat that would best fit or disrupt the previous pattern: if my last meal had a lot of calories, I'll aim to eat less or delay the current meal; if I've eaten rather mediocrely in the week prior I'll seek to correct it, and if I've eaten very well I seek to maintain it, but am willing to eat poorly as well in this condition because the trend of getting healthier doesn't change in one meal. Ultimately I spend little energy being concerned with micro progressions because I'm confident that my strategy is working and I'm in a constant state of feeling like I'm winning .

I think if I were to have such things as a strict daily calorie goal, a regimented eating schedule, and weigh-ins for grade, that I might not be as happy to be dieting than I am currently. Whether or not these things would produce better results seems dubious as well.

The risk of not setting goals is ending up far off-track of where one should be, or ultimately settling for less than one's best. Someday I'll check out Mason's book and see what quantitative research says about it.